MIA97LA012 · Air Tractor 400
Patterson Air Farming Air Tractor 400 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA012
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Air Tractor 400
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor 400
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N73080
- Operator
- Patterson Air Farming
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 137: Agricultural
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight manuals, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot intentionally operated the engine exceeding the maximum temperature limits during aerial application flights which he was advised against by several different individuals. The pilot stated that during an aerial application flight he first heard a loud sound with a subsequent loss of engine power. He initiated a forced landing in a field and after touchdown with the brakes heavily applied to avoid obstructions ahead, the airplane nosed over. Examination of the engine revealed that 7 of the 58 compressor turbine blades were failed near the midspan or platform. Oxidation was detected at one of the 7 blades and creep and necking was detected at the trailing edge of another of the blades. Additionally, severe burn erosion was noted to the trailing edges of the compressor turbine guide vanes. According to the ASM Metals Handbook, creep is a time dependent strain occurring under stress. Additionally, at elevated temperature, the service life of a metal component subjected to either non-vibratory or vibratory loading is predictably limited.
Probable cause
Was the pilots intentional disregard for operating the engine contrary to the flight manuals for intentionally exceeding the maximum engine temperature, resulting in creep failure of one of the compressor turbine blades.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA012
- Event ID
- 20001208X06949
- Case number
- MIA97LA012
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 989fa9c76bedc2ba2075a4b7c049b9f7d1e10d901379b727a784f21f6750d70d; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:33:25.957Z.